On the outside she'd drawn stick figures of the two of them on opposite sides of a football stadium. It reminded him of his parents and hers sitting at a high school football game, talking and laughing and watching the action on the field. He and Lauren had walked down behind the bleachers and there - in the shadows of the stadium - they shared their first kiss.

"Don't tell anyone ever, okay?" Lauren's cheeks were red. She could hardly wait to get back up to the bleachers.

"I won't. We can stay on opposite sides of the stadium, okay?" He grinned at her. "That way no one will ever guess."

"Okay. Let's do that."

He looked at the card now. It was lightly yellowed from the years that had passed. The stick figures couldn't have been farther apart. On the inside she'd written, "How's life on your side of the bleachers?"

He ran his fingers over the cover of the card and slipped it back into the box.

How had everything gone so wrong? They were the couple their friends liked to hold up as the perfect pair. Their families were best friends, they both had a determination to stay away from the pitfalls other couples fell to - either by spending too much time together or by getting too physical. It was that last summer, that's what did them in. When he looked back, it made sense that they'd fallen. They were alone so much of the time, and by then they were almost too comfortable with each other.

He looked back into the box. It was half full of cards and letters. He reached in and pulled out one that was folded into a small square. Carefully so he wouldn't rip the paper, he opened it and found the beginning. "Shane, we were studying zoo animals and Miss Erickson assigned me to work on the monkey. Which made me think of you. Remember the monkey? I never laughed so hard in all my life. Love you lots and lots, Lauren."

The monkey. A chuckle sounded low in his throat. He and Lauren had gone to the zoo with their sixth grade science class. He'd been caught talking to her, and the teacher forced him to give a speech on monkeys to the class.

Again the memory dimmed, and he reached for another folded note. This one had a picture Lauren had drawn. It was a fighter jet with a little man sitting in the cockpit. She'd drawn an arrow to the figure and scrawled the words, "You're gonna fly one day! When you go, take me with you."

The evening wore on that way with one special picture or letter after another. In the end, he packed everything back in the box and slipped it back into his closet. Wherever she was, he needed her. And he was certain she needed him. She was his best friend, the girl at the center of all his good memories of growing up.

He stared out the window into the dark. God, You know where she is and what she's doing. I have to find her. Please, God. I don't know what else to do.

The answer came clear and quick. Follow me, son, follow me.

The words took him by surprise. He hadn't been to youth group or read a Bible since he moved to Los Angeles. What he had done, though, was pray. And prayer felt more and more natural. Okay, so he'd follow Jesus. But what did that mean when it came to Lauren? When he told her he wouldn't ever love anyone the way he loved her, he'd been telling the truth. He needed her like water, like air.

He would pray for her and he would look for her until he found her. As long as he lived he would look. And one day - he believed without a single doubt - he'd find her. And then they could go through the box of memories together and laugh at all the funny times they'd shared.

The stick figures and the stadium, and especially the drawing of the fighter jet. All of that and a baby too. He could hardly wait.

ELEVEN.

Bill Anderson was in his office doing something he'd done every waking hour since Lauren left.

Talking to God.

He braced his elbows on his desk and covered his face with his hands. I'm back, God. I need to talk to you again about Lauren. His throat grew thick, and he held his breath to ward off the wave of sorrow. All he ever meant to do was love her. She was his precious girl, his only child. His daughter. Of course he wanted a bright future for her. Before Lauren's pregnancy, if that future had included Shane, then wonderful. Everyone would win. But once a baby was involved . . .

Everything changed.

Bill forced himself to exhale. When he first learned about his daughter's pregnancy, he was crushed. How he hated that his little girl would have to grow up too fast. But he didn't embrace the idea of keeping her from Shane until he saw the shallow, biting reaction from the Galanters. Anger stirred in him again at the thought, and he shifted in his chair. How dare Sheila and Samuel make his daughter out to be nothing more than a cheap tramp! And that's exactly how they treated her at the end. The more he thought about Lauren having the Galanters as in-laws, the more he felt angry and sick. She deserved so much more than that. But now, somehow everything had backfired.

God, I'm sorry. I took matters into my own hands, and now, well, I'm desperate. He made his hands into fists and pressed them against his eyes. He hadn't let Angela see him cry much, but the tears were there. Any time he thought about Lauren. Every few minutes he had an overwhelming desire to get in the car and drive after her, search the highways and byways from Chicago to California until he found her, until he could hold her in his arms and tell her how sorry he was.

I only meant to love her, Lord. Forgive me for not listening to her, for thinking I had all the answers. Give me a second chance with her, please. She's all alone out there, and she needs us. She needs us more than she knows. Thank you, God. He straightened and lowered his hands to his desk. He still had work to do that day, not the kind that used to keep his attention. But phone calls and meetings with a private investigator, someone who might help him find his daughter.

He pulled a list close and noticed that his hands were trembling. He missed her so much it was a physical pain, an ache slicing right through him. It was there when he woke up and when he turned off the lights each night. Where was she and what was she doing? How was she getting by without her their help?

He let out a shaky sigh. His prayer was right on. Wherever she was, his little girl needed him, the way she always had. But now he understood something he hadn't before.

How desperately he needed her too.

The truth was beginning to sink in.

Lauren was gone from their lives and she wasn't coming back. Three months had passed, and none of their efforts had made a bit of difference. Angela finished cleaning the kitchen and put the kettle on. Tea was always good at this time of the morning, something to give her day a sense of normalcy. As if she wasn't dying a little more every day.

Bill was home because it was Monday, the day he'd dedicated to finding Lauren.

"The business can do without me one day a week," he'd told her. "I can't stop looking. Not ever."

The kettle began to rattle, the water inside halfway to boiling. She leaned back and surveyed her kitchen. It was bright an dairy, the sort of kitchen in the sort of home she and Bill had always dreamed of having. But the dream never materialized, because always it had included Lauren. She should've been there, enjoying her upstairs bedroom, excited about her senior year in high school.

Her loss was a constant ache for both of them, the way it would be until they found her. She crossed her arms and heard Bill coming in from the other room. "Making tea?"

"Yes." She smiled at him as he walked through the doorway. "Want some?"

"Sure." He took up his position opposite her, the kitchen island between them. "I have an appointment with another investigator. He wants more information, anything we can remember about her past. Things that might be significant."

Angela took another mug from the cupboard and gave him a sad smile. "Shane Galanter." She shrugged one shoulder. "That's the most significant thing, right?"

He slumped a little. "Right." He blinked and his eyes looked wet. "Pastor Paul's coming over again tonight. There's three more to the Bible study we're doing."

Bible studies and meetings with pastors, all of it was so new to them. Why hadn't they found the richness of faith before, back when they were still living the perfect dream life, before Shane and Lauren fell to temptation and life turned upside down? How different things might've been if she and Bill had made faith more important to their daughter. To themselves.

The kettle began to whistle, low and steady. She flipped the burner off and poured the tea. "I love meeting with him. Everything he's showing us, it's just what we need."

Bill bit his lip. "It's what we needed years ago." He took his tea, moved around the kitchen island and kissed her tenderly. "I'm sorry, Angela. I'll tell you every day until we find her. It's my fault she left." He pulled back a few inches. "You asked me to think it through, and I didn't do it. I thought . . . I thought I was protecting her, loving her."

"I know." She lifted her eyes to her husband. "We have to keep praying."

"And searching." He took the tea and headed back toward the doorway and the den around the corner. "I have a few phone calls to make before I meet with the PI. I'm guessing by now she's enrolled in college somewhere. The PI wanted me to make a list of the schools she might've been interested in."

"Okay." She watched him go. First it had been a search on Lauren's license plate, and then a search of the hotels she might've stayed in along the way. Next it was hotels in California, and now they were moving on to colleges.

It all felt so futile.

The only bit of searching that had turned up anything at all was the license plate check. According to the information found by the first investigator, Lauren had sold her car in New Mexico. Clearly she must've used the money to buy a new car, but that's where the trail died off. Angela picked up her tea and remembered back, the way she always did at this time of the day. There had been no warnings, no sign that her daughter was about to bolt. Lauren had spent the night at Emily's side, and when she left at four-thirty that morning, it was with the promise that she'd come back after she got some sleep.

Angela closed her eyes and drifted back to that day, the way it had played out hour after hour. By mid afternoon she was concerned about Lauren and where she might've gone. She called home, but there was no answer. Finally around six o'clock, Bill called her.

"I'm coming down." He hesitated. "How's Lauren doing?"

Alarm rang through her heart and mind. "Lauren's at home." She pressed the receiver to her ear so she could hear above the commotion in the waiting room.

"No, she isn't." His voice held instant alarm. "I thought she was there."

"Have you checked her room?"

"No, I just thought . . . give me a minute, I'll check." He wasn't gone long. When he returned, his voice was more strained than before. "She's not here. It looks like she slept in her bed, but she's gone. Maybe she's on her way there."

Back then, Angela was still furious with her husband, still barely able to talk to him without feeling hateful toward him for what he'd done by breaking up Shane and Lauren. Even if it had been done with love as the motive. When he suggested that Lauren might be on her way to the hospital, Angela didn't push the issue; she only hurried the phone call and agreed that it would be wise for him to come. Maybe he was right, she'd told herself. Lauren was on her way back; that had to be it. She wouldn't simply leave town - and Emily - without some sort of explanation, would she? Not when she hadn't given them any warning. But after another thirty minutes, she had a certainty equaled only by the pain inside her.

Lauren was gone.

Again Angela called the police, and she was given the same answer: wait twenty-four hours and file a missing persons report. She was frantic at the thought of Lauren back on the road, setting out to find Shane, especially when she was so upset. After an hour Angela went to the nurse's station and questioned everyone on staff, trying to figure out if Lauren had called. By all accounts, she hadn't talked to any of them since she left the hospital that morning.

Angela's only clue came when she talked to the woman manning the desk in the pediatric unit.

"Have you asked anyone in labor and delivery? Sometimes our calls get mixed up."

She thanked the woman and hurried to the other side of the floor where labor and delivery was housed. The woman at the desk was pleasant, but distracted.

"Can I help you?" She had a novel in her hand, and she seemed anxious to get back to her reading.

"Yes." Angela gripped the edge of the counter. "My daughter is supposed to be here. I'm trying to figure out if she called."

"What's her name?"

"Lauren Anderson. She would've called looking for her infant daughter, Emily."

A light dawned in the woman's eyes, and Just as quickly a sheepishness. "You know, something that happened earlier this afternoon's starting to make sense." She nodded. "She might've called."

"What . . . what makes you think so?" Angela wanted to run around the counter and shake the woman. The information wasn't coming nearly fast enough.

"Well - " the nurse closed her book and sat up straighter - "I took a call from a woman looking for an Emily Anderson." She cringed. "I thought she must've been one of our new moms. See, we had a newborn named Emma Henderson who had gone home a few hours earlier."

The pieces swirled in Angela's head. She pressed her fingers to her temples and stared at the woman. "I'm not seeing the connection."

"Sorry." A nervous laugh sounded from her throat. "I think she asked about Emily, and I told her she was gone. That she'd been gone for a few hours." The woman sifted through a pile of papers. "After she hung up, I realized we were maybe talking about different babies. Emily Anderson, Emma Henderson. You know, pretty close."

Angela wanted to scream. "That's it? Did she say anything else?"

"Actually . . . " The nurse's smile faded. "She sounded a little distracted. She never actually said good-bye, just sort of hung up on me."

Angela's heart sank to her knees. "Great."

"The woman who called, she's your daughter?" The nurse seemed sorry, but she was already picking up the novel again, positioning herself to dig into the next chapter.

"Yes." She took a few steps backward and shook her head. "Don't worry about it."

"Yeah, I mean it was an honest mistake." She gave her a weak smile. "Sorry if it caused any confusion."

Any confusion? Angela could barely make her feet move as she left the labor and delivery area and returned to the pediatric wing. She found a seat in a quiet part of the waiting room and covered her face with her hands. The details were shaky, but they were easy to string together. If Lauren had called and asked about Emily, and if she'd been told that the baby was gone, that she'd been gone for a few hours, then Lauren might've figured - She could never quite finish the thought. Not then and not now.

Her tea wasn't steaming like before, so she picked it up and cradled her hands around the warm mug. In the days since then it was easier to believe that Lauren had run for other reasons. That she had convinced herself she needed to find Shane before she could be a mother, and that she wasn't able to handle the responsibility at this time in her life.

The alternative was terrifying.

A soft little cry drifted down the stairs, and Angela looked at the clock. Almost eleven, right on schedule. Her days were nothing if not directed by a routine since Lauren had left. It was a good thing, really. The busyness of her day kept her sane, and gave her a reason to hang on.

She set down her tea and headed upstairs. With each step the memory of that awful day returned. Bill had arrived at the hospital minutes after her conversation with the labor and delivery nurse, and after he realized that Lauren was gone again, he dropped to one of the waiting room chairs, and for the first time since she'd known him, he wept. The sobs that came from him that day told her that he was not the hard, dominating person she was beginning to think him. He was a father who had sought the best for his only child, his daughter. But everything he'd done in the past six months had backfired, and now he was as overcome by grief as she.

They filed the missing person's report the next day, but it did no good. The first police officer they'd talked to was right. No one on the force was going to spend man-hours searching for a seventeen-year-old runaway, a girl driving a nearly new sports car and headed for California.

But something happened in the days that followed. Though Angela and Bill came no closer to finding Lauren, they did come closer to each other. They dropped to their knees near the side of Lauren's bed and did something they'd never done together before. They prayed. Since then, though they carried the pain of Lauren's loss with them, they had a strength and a hope that was unexplainable, unearthly.

The cry from the upstairs room grew louder.

"Coming, honey." Angela hurried her pace. She rounded the corner into the room that should've belonged to Lauren. The baby had kicked off her light blanket, her arms and legs flailing as her cry turned lusty. "Emily, shh. It's okay."

She swept the baby up in her arms and cuddled her close against her chest. Lauren was missing so much. Her baby was changing with every passing week, losing that newborn look and getting more of her own personality and facial expressions.

"Shh, sweetheart. It's okay." She held her close and carried her downstairs, cooing at her the whole way. "Grandma'll heat up your bottle, okay?"

Emily settled down, her eyes big and blue as they looked straight at her. She made a soft sound, and Angela had the sense - as she'd had before - that this little girl would be a fighter, a child of determination. Already she knew what she wanted and when, and she wasn't about to go unnoticed.

Angela warmed the bottle and took Emily to a rocking chair in the living room. They were just seated when Bill came up and stood behind them, his hand on Angela's shoulder.

"She's beautiful."

"Yes."

"Can you see it?" He leaned down and brushed his fingers over Emily's forehead, down the side of her cheek. "The way she looks like her parents."

"I can." Tears stung at Angela's eyes, but she blinked them away. She'd already cried enough tears for a lifetime. Emily needed her now, and she needed her happy and full of energy. "I think she's going to have dark hair like Shane."

"And Lauren's blue eyes."

"Mmm-hmm." She smiled at the baby, but inside her heart was breaking. "Sometimes I'm not sure which hurts more. Missing Lauren, or seeing her every day in Emily's eyes."

Bill didn't say anything. After a few minute she leaned closer and kissed Emily on the head. Then he straightened and gave Angela a side hug. "I'll let you know how it goes with the PI."

"Okay." She put her hand over his and squeezed. "I'll be praying."

He left through the door to the garage, and she listened as he started his car and pulled away. Private investigators and phone calls and desperate threads of possibility. That's all they had to go on now, all they could draw from if they wanted to find their daughter.

She ran her thumb along Emily's cheek.

The thing was, Lauren had been crazy for her daughter, completely taken with her. Yes, she wanted to find Shane, and no, her trip west with Emily hadn't gone well. But she wouldn't have walked out of the hospital that day without saying good-bye. She would've at least explained that she needed to find Shane, and that she wanted to hand responsibility to Emily over. For a short time, anyway.